Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Peace in our time: Iran, Israel and Incitement

There will be
much hand-wringing and frustration expressed with the Israeli attitude towards
the agreement signed today between Iran
and the “P5+1” group (the USA,
Britain, France, Russia,
China and Germany). The following below is
a minute selection of the reasons for Israeli wariness of Iranian intentions:

“Every Muslim,
from the moment they realize the distinction in their hearts, hates Americans,
hates Jews, and hates Christians, this is a part of our belief and our
religion.” Osama Bib-Laden in an interview to Al Jazeera 1998.

“First the Saturday people (Jews) and then
the Sunday people (Christians)". Yasser ArafatArafat added that the Palestinian flag would fly from 'minarets' in 'Al
Kuds'. (i.e. synagogues and churches would become mosques)

Article 7 of the Hamas Charter is taken
from Hadith Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177: Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight
with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say.
"O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.(This quote applies equally to all Jews
irrespective of age or sex and is oft repeated from pulpits throughout the
Muslim world).Hadith Bukhari is second
only to the Koran in being regarded as the most authoritative of all Muslim literature.

Mohamed Morsi, until recently, President of
Egypt
stated for the TV cameras the following in 2010 “We must never forget, brothers,
to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists,
for Jews.” He then reminded his audience of a quote from the Koran, the holiest
book in Islam: “The Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs.” (Repeated in Chapters
2, 5 and 7 of the Koran)

Of course the previous Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke as an ultra-orthodox Muslim who many would suspect
was frankly unhinged.When he spoke it
was with the imprimatur of the power behind the thrown, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
You cannot be elected to parliament in Iran without
Khamenei’s authorisation.

Since his election, President Rouhani has
said Israel
is a "wound" that "had to be removed".There was some debate on whether the
translation from Farsi should be read as a ‘sore’ or a ‘wound’ but only a fool
would quibble over the difference.

The threat of appeasing Iran has bizarrely drawn a long list of Israel’s implacable enemies towards an
unofficial rapprochement (the Gulf States, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia to name the few) with her.

Israel has
suffered 65 years of warfare, 65 years has it been threatened with annihilation
and yes it remains militarily, the most powerful nation state in the Near-East.
But the unremitting hatred that expresses itself in sermons by Islamic scholars,
undermining Israel’s
legitimacy everywhere at every opportunity cannot encourage Israeli confidence
in any deal that is signed with Iran.Much of the debate today focuses on a Palestinian
or Muslim narrative that is filled with holes, deception and outright lies. And
then Israel
is told to trust the same Western nations that have never lifted a finger to
stop the constant drip drip drip of hate that has enveloped the Internet, the
Western media as well as all of the organs of the antisemitic United Nations
Organisation.

Nobel Prize
winning novelist Wole Soyinka says that “Arabs and Islam are guilty of the
cultural and spiritual savaging of the Continent”, their unrepentant and
unrelenting, often violent racism he calls the great taboo.In ignoring the racism that inheres the Arab
debate on Israeli or Jewish rights; or in dismissing the narrative of conquest,
ridicule, vilification and hate that typifies the Islamic discourse (not just
since the creation of Jewish self-determination in historic Israel) Israel has
to hope for the best but make preparations for the worst.

I leave you with
the words of Saudi cleric and poet Muhammad al-Farrajii and a final insight. Al-Farrajii’s unadulterated hatred for Shiites
(he calls Iranians “Zoroastrians”), and the rest of non-Sunni humanity is incitement to genocide. In his long
poem that he read out on Shada TV (September 13, 2013) he lauded Hitler for
“barbecuing Russians and Jews”.

If President
Obama and his major domo John Kerry (current Secretary of State) want Israel to
buckle under and accept their agenda they must appreciate that none of their
actions over the five years of the Obama administration help to remove doubt
about the deal.

1 comment:

obama and his crew have no idea how the middle east operates, they take their cue from their european counterparts, placate the arabs at the expense of israel. the issue is israel seems to have invested in thinking the west cares about it, in fact the best thing israel can do is return the $ it collects from the usa and tell the us where to go!then it should mobilise towards self sufficiency before the un begins it's embargo dressed up as a boycott divestment sanction.